Happy Birthday: Alexander Payne

[on Reese Witherspoon in Election (1999)] She inhabited that role fully, but she can do all these other roles. You see a woman in her, not a girl. She’s going to be interesting for a long time.

[on casting] They [the studios] go through that process where they think you have to find the most famous people possible and then they go down the line. That’s a game I’m increasingly uninterested in – unless the most famous possible person also happens to be very correct in the part, like Jack Nicholson.

I want all of my films to belong to me. There is an audience out there for literate films – slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made. Which is why I want Sideways (2004) to succeed, to encourage other film-makers.